


The Leftovers

by JamesJohnEye



Category: The Book Thief - Markus Zusak, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-06 02:01:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 12,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5398640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JamesJohnEye/pseuds/JamesJohnEye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of the many times Death visited Daryl Dixon, before and after he became an archer, before and after the light blue eyes, before and after Death was so, so tired, his arms so, so heavy with souls. </p><p>It is a small story about, among other things; an archer, colors, leftovers and quite a lot of endings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Endings - leftovers - colors

**Author's Note:**

> We had to read 'The Book Thief' by Markus Zusak for our literary class. I wrote a story inspired by it during our lectures.

 

* * *

 

 

This story doesn’t start at the beginning. Of course not. I never show up at any beginning. Instead, it starts at an ending, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a short story. It just means that it has several endings, right at the beginning and there are even several in the middle, though, as cliché as it might be; there’s only one way this story truly ends.

It ends with me.

 

**A warning:**

**This story will not have a happy ending.**

 

I don’t think I have to introduce myself. You will know me soon enough, or you might have heard of me. Sometimes I visit family. I’m sorry. I don’t get to decide.

Let me just say this then, for I don’t want to be rude and I don’t want you to be afraid; when the end comes, I will be there for you. I will lift you from your body, cradle you against my shoulder, and we shall watch the colors together. What color the sky will be is up to you, of course. I can’t wait to see it.

That is not a threat. Don’t worry, I’m all bluster. I don’t know when the sky will be filled with your color, so don’t bother asking. I keep my secrets.

 

**An explanation of the aforementioned warning:**

**I don’t do happy endings. I often find people when they’re sad, broken, tired, confused, glad, content, angry, fearful, at peace. Sometimes people are waiting for me. Sometimes they welcome me, even. But they’re never truly happy when they see me.**

 

The ending might be the beginning of this story, but my mistake is the cause of it.

You see, I make mistakes sometimes. I betray myself. The mistakes are small and last only a lifetime. They only ever hurt me.

My first rule is this; do not look at the leftover humans. The survivors.

It is the reason why I love to watch the color of the sky, try to taste it on my tongue, inhale it into my lungs, let it fill me up so there’s no more room for the heart-ache of the mourners, of the others, of the children, of the husbands, of sons, of wives who are now widows, of daughters and orphans, of best friends, of the strangers who still care. It’s too much, even for me. See, you don’t get used to it. Instead, it stays with you, builds up, weights you down until one day you don’t want to go to work anymore.

I can’t let that happen. There’s no one to take my place.

So I distract myself with colors.

It doesn’t always work.

 

**My favorite color is blue.**

**People always act so surprised when they find out.**

**‘Like the sky?’ they’ll ask.**

**‘Yes,’ I tell them.**

**But I lie.**

              

So now you know about the colors, about the survivors.

I have met some of the survivors, those who get left behind, the leftovers, even though I try not to. It can’t always be helped. I’ve done this work for millions of years. I’ve made one or two mistakes.

You must not take offence because of my tone; this job wears you down. It’s always the same, and usually, when I come, it’s because of some other human’s fault. They shout orders about bombs, about gas chambers, about it being for the greater good, about oil, about freedom, about justice, about a future for their children. I try not to judge, but when the sky is dark, dark, too dark for any color, darker still than black, I find myself thinking; they are not worth it.

That’s when the colors are not enough. Or too much.

Either way, that’s usually when I mess up.

It was that way with this story. My heart was heavy when I saw him.

I almost didn’t notice how blue his eyes were.

 

**An elaboration on that earlier confession:**

**I lie about it being like the sky. It used to be, before it changed. Now it’s a dark blue, like the ink in a fountain pen. Or like bruises. So dark that it’s almost black.**

**I think it suits me better.**

 

I visited the archer many, many times.


	2. Green - mustard

 

* * *

 

 

The first time I visited him, he wasn’t an archer yet. He was just a little boy standing on the side of the street. His hair was yellow. His cheeks flushed. One arm was curled around his abdomen, like he needed to hold the flesh in order to keep the coiling organs in place.

There were people standing nearby but not next to him. They were all looking at him.

Some looked fascinated, others far too condescending.

The sky was filled with fire. Embers, ash, red, yellow, orange, gray and black, against a blue, blue, blue sky.

 

**There are often crowds when I visit.**

**People find me fascinating.**

The house was on fire. I knew it was his because of the horrified expression on his face.

Far away, firetrucks were racing through the streets in order to get to this little scene. Of course, they would arrive too late. I was already there.

I watched the sky and tried to see the colors. I still blame myself for noticing that the blue, blue, blue sky was the same color as the boy’s eyes. By the time I realized that, I knew I’d made a vital mistake. I was interested. In the boy.

So I stood beside him while we watched how his house burned down. I looked at his eyes and saw how they turned dark. Light blue, like the sky on this summer afternoon, to muddied waters, the ocean, maybe, just before a storm hits.

Something had died inside the boy.

 

**Don’t worry.**

**I only take whole souls. He wasn’t mine yet.**

 

I stayed by his side for as long as my schedule allowed it.

Then I moved into the house, leaving the boy with his ocean eyes at the side of the road, alone. The flames didn’t bother me. I found the soul upstairs, resting in a bed and body. Warmed by flames.

It had a worn-out, dull green color.

I scooped it up, as gently as I could, and carried it away.

 

 

The second time, we were alone in a small cabin which smelled of stale beer, spend cigarettes and the sharp sting of abandoned hope. The boy was long gone, but the archer wasn’t there yet, even though he lurked in the muscles and family legacy. He was just a man. The eyes widened once more, though not in horror this time. He looked down at the body of his father.

 

**A note on those eyes:**

**They are blue, blue, dark blue still.**

The body was in a chair. Slouched, wasting away even when he’d been still alive. The soul had an ugly color. Mustard, with flecks of brown, black, dark green like it had been rotting inside his body.

I never judge. That isn’t my job. I carry all souls, regardless of what color the sky is at the time, and cradle them against my shoulder, gently, gently.

The man, who would be an archer but was now only a dead-man’s son, took a step towards the body. He kicked his father’s foot. The body jostled a bit.

Dull eyes stared at a spot on the dirty carpet.

‘Well, fuck me,’ the dead-man’s son breathed.

Leftovers often talk to the dead, I know. I try not to listen, but I can’t always help it. Colors make no sounds. They can’t always distract me enough. Sometimes people plea, pray, cry, attempt to bargain or gamble with their own souls. Other times it’s quiet. People slipping away during the night, no one there to hold a vigil, or to weep or cry. I like those visits best.

They make my job easier.

 

**Sometimes I want to say something to the ones left behind but it is not allowed.**

‘Jack-ass,’ the man said. Soon, he would have to call friends, family, cops, people who will take away the body. But at that moment, he just looked and stood there.

I collected the soul. Let it rest against my shoulder.

‘Took ya long enough.’

The man left before I did. The door slammed behind him.


	3. hearts - haunting

 

* * *

 

 

There were even times when I visited him without even knowing it. When he was nothing more than fading footsteps, a shadow slipping away, a lone bolt in a skull on the barricade. Those times, I couldn’t even see those blue, blue, blue eyes dark, didn’t even look for them. I will be honest, as honest as I can; in retrospect, I’m sorry I missed him.

The CDC was still made of fire when I entered it. I found two souls, so close together that their colors were blending.

By this time, my heart was heavier still than when I’d met the archer as a little boy. The world had changed. The air now tasted of despair, broken hearts and dreams, the deep red that could be purple in the wrong light. Like smoke, it made my eyes burn. And like fire, it charred my heart.

I have one, of course. A heart. Whether it beats is another matter entirely.

I don’t suppose it matters. People rarely mean that thumping organ when they talk about hearts. When souls come to rest upon my chest, they will hear the sound of my footsteps, my breathing. That should be enough.

 When people talk about hearts, I’ve found that they usually mean love and pain and all the stuff in between. All the things they think that makes them human.

But I love, too. Colors, mostly. Souls which melt into my shoulder, content and welcoming. A room filled with people who are silent as the grave. Lovers who aren’t scared to touch the rapidly cooling skin of their significant others. People who aren’t afraid.

I feel pain, too. I don’t want to talk about that.

So, the world had changed and my heart was so, so heavy and my arms so, so tired from carrying all those souls. Sometimes so many, I thought they would spill over, slide from my shoulders, that I would not be enough. It didn’t happen. I was everywhere, for months on end.

 

**The sky had been dark like chocolate.**

**Bitter and burned and breathtaking.**

Now, I wander through places I used to frequent. Hospitals, warzones, hospices, bad neighborhoods. It feels strange. Empty. I ghost through the streets, waiting to be called upon.

Before, I used to rush in order to get everything on my schedule done. Now, I sit and wait.

Maybe that’s why I took an interest in the archer. Maybe I knew this would happen, just as I knew he would become an archer. That little boy, on the side of the road, all alone. I’d known then that he was just like me. He is the aftermath. He is the hand that shuts empty eyes, the shovel to dig the grave, he is that shrill, unbroken tone that announces a stopped heart.

The world is so empty and cold and coated in a murky brown color now. Like a sunrise, I can taste it in the air. My lungs fill with the emptiness of it all. I long for the break of that blue color. Every time I’m called now, I hope to see him.

 

**I am selfish.**

**I don’t want him to hurt, no, no, I don’t want those ocean eyes to be filled with water, I’d never want that, please, believe me.**

**But I do want to see him. And the water only makes the blue eyes bluer, which makes it better, and _more_ , and…**

**I am selfish.**

This might strike you as a strange story. There’s no real beginning, no middle and too many endings. There is a main character, a narrator whom you cannot trust, (you can, sometimes, I always try to be honest, but I’m not fair. I cheat people.) and a time period of a lifetime. I’ve heard many stories. Sometimes I fear you might find this one boring. There will be no sudden twists. You know how this will end.

 

**I’m predictable like that.**

One problematic thing about this story is this; I cannot stay with him.

What he does between my visits is a mystery to me. Sometimes I find him crumpled on the ground, gasping for breath, spitting blood on the forest floor, red between brown and green, but I never know why. Other times he’s sitting outside in a hallway, leaning on his crossbow, biting on his thumb, and I never know how he got there or where he will be going next. The people surrounding him change, new people, young people, old people. Later, I will recognize them. I even learn some of their names.

Rick. Joe. Michonne. Carol.

I never know where they came from. And when I arrive, it always takes me a moment to figure out whether they are his friends now, or later, or never.

With some, I’m still not sure.

Sometimes he is the reason why I visit. It will be like he invited me with a knife, with a gun, with the crossbow that defines him; tricky to master but so deadly and silent.

Other times, he looks like he wished I’d never come. I don’t want to talk about those times. Not yet. I will tell you about them soon enough. They are a part of this story, after all, and I’m trying to be honest. I’ve cheated him, on several occasions. I like to think it’s not my fault.

After the dark, dark, dark chocolate days, when my arms are tired of the many souls, when I think about quitting but can’t, I take holidays in those blue, blue, blue eyes dark.

I try to stay with him for as long as I can.

 

**I used to think I was haunted by humans,**

**but there are so few left now.**

**I fear I might be doing the haunting instead.**

 

 


	4. being early - being ready

 

* * *

 

 

**Endings are difficult to predict.**

**There were times I thought I was it. The ending.**

**But sometimes I arrive too early.**

There was a crying boy, a dying man and people running to give aid. The archer was among them. Blue, blue, blue eyes dark. I would recognize him anywhere. He was the archer now, crossbow on his back and people relying on his bolts. Years had passed. He still looked much like the man who’d left before I did. This time, though, he wasn’t silent, nor did he speak. Instead, he screamed. _Help. Over here!_ _Help us_. The knife in his hand was bloody, but he wasn’t the reason why I was there.

The sky was turning a pale purple, bleeding into the sky like how the dying man was bleeding into the grass. Quickly, and with no hope of stopping.

The archer kneeled beside the dying man, looked up at the sky, and for a moment I thought he could see it too. The color. But he looked down again, moving towards the man, backing away, unsure and horrified because of the red, of the purple though he didn’t see, of me, maybe.

I fear that he will blame me, one day. That he will be in my arms, so blue, or red, or maybe blinding like that brightest of orange, or even lime, and that he would blame me for the state of his new world. When the dead are walking, it seems sensible to blame Death, but I did my job.

They are soulless creatures, dead but too alive still. I took them, I carried them, gently, gently, so many at the time, but I did it and this is not my fault, I can’t help it, I am the result and I am the consequence, but I am not the reason for this, all of this, none of this is _me_. I did my part. He will understand, in the end.

 

**A doubtful statement:**

**He will understand.**

 

The dying man was old. It wasn’t age that was robbing him of his remaining breaths, however. There was an ugly wound. Lots of blood, very, very red. A horrified expression which turned eyes wide and scared.

The people knew that I was coming. They cried, moaned, begged.

 

**A note on knowing and reacting:**

**Everyone knows.**

**Everyone reacts.**

They hadn’t realize that I was already among them. Leftovers can’t see me. And if they could, I wouldn’t be what they were looking for. To them, I am a ticking clock, a heart which stops beating, breath which catches, lungs that fill with water instead of air. They don’t understand that I am not the reason. I am the result.

 

**I always try to be punctual. I hate being late, but being early is worse still.**

**The waiting. The watching. The looming.**

**I try not to be morbid, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.**

A man stepped forward, gun and bullet and unsteady hand. Trembling fingers on cold metal.

He hesitated.

 

**There are things I could say to make it easier.**

_**He will be safe in my arms. This ends, but I will always be here. He will rest on my shoulder and I will carry him, no matter what color the sky or his soul is at the time.** _

**But I didn’t say it.**

**I’ve told you; it is not allowed.**

The archer stepped forward, curled his fingers around the gun, took it.

‘Sorry brother,’ he said. And pulled the trigger.

I loved him for it.

 

**I hate waiting. I don’t, usually.**

**No one is ever truly ready.**

 

 


	5. Prison - brothers

 

* * *

 

 

The next time was much the same, only different. I visited when they were embraced by stone and metal, away from the woods which entrap my archer’s footsteps, making him so silent, silently, so green and brown and invisible. But stone betrays him. It hates his footsteps, casting them away, down corridors where darker things lurk than me. Metal rings out his name when heavy doors fall into locks, away and deeper and further down. I don’t think it ever fades.

The man was there. This time, he didn’t hesitate.

A glance at the archer. _Yes_ , I wanted to tell him, _he is there. Right behind you, watching, waiting, looming. He is like me. He is always there. Waiting._

The eyes of the man are blue, but different than the archer’s. When I’d seen them, years, seconds, months, eons ago when he hesitated, they had been wide and honest, now they are nothing like the ocean but still dark, but they look at the archer and they’re met, so that must mean something.

Maybe they’re family.

Or maybe I’ll soon collect that man, after an invite of a silent bolt.

I don’t suppose it matters for this story; who they are.

 

**Two facts I hadn’t learned at the time:**

**His name is Rick.**

**They weren’t brothers until they were.**

 

A machete came down in a flurry of limbs, screams, that trickle of disbelief that coats the air.

Wide eyes, brown, but soul emerging among his dying body, heavy limbs thudding onto a floor as a boot shoves the torso down, tearing the machete away, dripping red, red, onto the concrete.

And then a man ran, dressed in blue, all wrong, and the man who I didn’t know was Rick followed him into the darkness while the sky morphed into the color of liver.

I picked the soul up. Couldn’t help but linger as I watched how the archer forced men onto their knees with his bow, voice so hard and punishing it kept me grounded, rooted to concrete.

They spoke. I tried not to listen, to just watch; the brown hair, the blue eyes, the blackness of the bow, of his fingernails, of his tongue as he punished and threatened, of the pupils wide with adrenaline, so, so wrong as it almost drowned the blueness out.

 

**Rick came back. The other man did not.**

For a moment I feared that I would be called away, but I wasn’t. I could stay with my archer a bit longer.

They walked back through narrow hallways. I followed in their wake.

It didn’t take me long to recognize the outline of any prison. I had visited them often and the smell of injustice was still strong on the walls, covering it like wallpaper.

Is this your new home, I wanted to ask the archer. After the house, after the cabin, after the field of that farm, is this your new home now? Do you sleep under this roof?

He looked comfortable, Rick at his side, crossbow in his strong hands, no fear seeping like sweat down his neck, no horror that turned his red blood too cold inside his veins.

Did the woods burn, I wanted to know. Is that the reason why you’re not out there, where you have no footfalls, where your breath turns white during winter, where the sky stretched and the ocean matches your eyes, every day? Why are you inside a prison? Can you not taste that you do not belong here, that the air is all wrong when it doesn't tousle that dark mop of hair that is brown but sometimes auburn or black and was that young blond when I first saw you? The ones walking beside you, who you're walking towards, can't they see that you do not belong behind bars, that you cannot, because you're not a person like them, you're nothing like them, not so binary in your identification, you're not only not-female but you're also blue and haunted by me, can they not see that? You're mine, even though I cannot have you yet, in the way no one else is, but will be someday, seconds before I pick up their souls, but not lifetimes before that, not like you are. My archer, have I not used those words before, did they not notice? Can't they smell it in the air when you collect your bolts and wipe them red on the green grass? Why are you living here, among all this sameness? All that gray that isn’t like the grayness of dawn, or the threat of dusk, but made of man and madness? _Where are the colors_?

 

**I worry.**

Everything is so dull, so like the month of January, tedious in its wasted potential, deceptively calm but just a timed façade for a coiling spring, winding, winding, winding up until it snaps. Why are you here where you don’t belong, where you are all the colors, and no one can see anything else and… Don’t make it yours. This isn’t you, you are so blue, blue, blue eyes dark, and your skin is tanned, splattered with red of blood, always the same on any human but so rich on you, like a king with his crown and jewels, a marvel, a freak of nature, so unique and terrifying and comforting like any non-color, like silver, or gold. Too harsh and metallic on my tongue. Too big for my lungs.

I wanted to warn him of the color gray.

It will take you. And it will keep you. Forever.

 

**I worry so.**

 

These people, are they your friends? Is Rick your family? Do you trust that shade of blue, so alike and unlike your own, does those pale red lips speak truth? His voice, _shit happens_ , which color is it in your ears, do his footsteps taste of purple, of pink, does his heart beat in yellow, or is it gray, gray, gray like everything else here?

Please, I wanted to beg. Tell me why, why, why all of this, why him and why here and why did Rick invite me into your home and why can I not shake the feeling that there is something wrong, why wasn't I called when Rick came back, why did he come back at all, why didnt you raise your bow at him, because he might be your brother but I know what he did to... I'm sorry. Please, no, no, don't... I keep my secrets. This isn't, no, please, I didn't mean to, this isn't part of my archer's story. I don't know. I forget everyone I see, nobody means anything to me, I don't remember that field and that's not why I worry. There wasn't a scream, a struggle, a little boy watching. The moon wasn't that pale white which people mistake for silver. I was never there, the soul wasn't even that strange mixture of red and yellow, like an apple with a bite taken out of it, edges sharp from jagged teeth, it wasn't like that at all.

And if it was, I can't ever tell.

He can't know. It's not allowed.  

I wait and I watch the colors and I carry. That is my task.

(I wait and I watch the colors and I love blue and I worry so and I carry)

I keep my secrets.

 

**I’ve visited Rick before.**

**I know what he does to those he calls _brother_.**

 


	6. Please - tell - me

 

* * *

 

 

I already mentioned this time. I’m sorry, but I want to tell it properly now, because it happened in a hallway, in a room, nowhere near him but inside his heart and mind and veins and suddenly there was a gunshot and he didn’t move but still died, a little, some, maybe more than he let on or anyone understood but – I’m sorry. It’s hard for me to tell these stories in any way you might understand. Perhaps you still don’t. The words feel wrong on my tongue and fingertips. I’m not used to telling stories. Mostly I watch them happen. I always pretend not to care.

Characters and setting and time and location and cause and effect and reason and motive and backgrounds and foreshadowing and relationships and plot.

Right.

It started happening in a room. Or, it ended in a room, so that’s the beginning of this particular chapter.

There were two women. Two men. And one archer.

As you might expect; one of them was about to die.

Please, you must understand, I wasn’t really waiting, or watching or looming. I wasn’t even early this time. I was late, in fact. It had been a busy day. So, cause and effect, busy days, the reason why I was there; there was also a corpse in the room. The corpse was silent and still, if you’re interested in that kind of detail.

One of the women was dying.

I had recognized her as soon as I’d entered the room earlier. Blond hair, yellow like streetlamps seen through sheer curtains, or like orange juice mixing with water and slowly dripping down a drain. I saw how she got bitten. Figured I might as well stick around for the end.

She seemed like a fighter, I thought. She’d want to go out with a bang.

              

**(That made me smile. Sorry. People tell me my sense of humor needs work. It’s so dark.)**

              

Luckily, I didn’t have to wait very long.

The door opened and there he was. Bouncing a little on the balls of his feet, a gun in his hands, pressed against his cheek, the crossbow on his back like a shield. Blue, blue, blue eyes dark, darker in this dungeon where desperation was slowly dying into grim determination and acceptance.

Another woman swept in, throwing a sword on the ground and kneeling. ‘Andrea,’ she whispered, in a color much like the softest of pinks, before it fades into whiteness.

My archer was made of shadows. The skin pale, but tanned and dirty and clean. He walked past me, smelling of leather and sweat and blue. He didn’t kneel down before Andrea like Rick did, (I knew him now, wouldn’t ever forget his name until I had carried his soul away, years, minutes, seconds, millennia later).

Rick saw the bite. Glanced back at the archer and hid his own blue eyes.

‘Carl, Judith,’ Andrea said and I know they must be names because Rick’s chest was suddenly much too red and dark and streaked with purple for them to be anything else.

Another question and Rick again looked at the archer before answering. Perhaps Rick could see the way shadows love him so, almost swallow him, spitting him out at the right moments when they need the death that is his eyes and trigger finger, when they need his footsteps to be so, so silent, or his fists, so loud when they collide with a jaw. Sometimes I worry about that. He is an archer. He is made of wood and everyone knows how easily that can snap. How people carve it with a knife, slicing away until all that is left is something they wanted it to be, nothing of what it was.

I worry about that sharp knife because every time I see him, he’s not the same. Time passes with him, without me, leaving him different, sometimes harder, sometimes softer, other times simply _less_. He changes, not just simple things either, like hair and skin and tan and eyes and soul, but others things too. It’s not so much the knife, really, that makes my blood run that muddy brown-white-black of the last snow and ice just before spring sets in. It’s that I’m not sure who wields it. Rick. Maybe. Or Time.

But perhaps Rick looked back because he could see how relaxed the shoulders were, how the gray of home lingered in his stance, easily forgotten but always taking and keeping, of how moved and unmoved he was at the same time, which makes him steady and solid and real.

The archer tilted his chin up slightly.

‘They never could.’

The words were a soft rumble in my belly, like hunger, but better and deeper and less destructive even though they still make me want to take and swallow and bite down.

Rick passed a gun to the dying woman. The gun he loved so much, always so close to his itching hands, always fitting perfectly, so dark but also green, and he puts it in her hands where it’s just cold and the ending I’ve been waiting for.

 They left her. All, but the other woman. She stayed.

I figured I wouldn’t have to, then.

Out in the hallway. Rick was almost plastered to the door, waiting for his gun to fire, mind still racing about how this could happen, why it happened, how unfair it is that nothing could be done but wait now. Witness.

My archer kneeled. Leaned on a gun, chewed on his lip, on his fingers, bowed his head.

 

**Does he ask God to look after her, does he pray that He will welcome her soul, after I bring it, or does he pray to me that I will carry her, gently, gently, because he thinks of me now, so often and now, now of course at this moment, when they’re all waiting for the reason and then me?**

**Does he pray?**

**There’s so much I don’t know about him.**

 

The gunshot.

He didn’t flinch.

Just dropped his head, hiding blue, blue, blue eyes dark behind darker hair.

 

**_Does he pray?_ **

**To me?**

**Does he worship me like how I worship his colors?**

**Please, I need to know.**

 

 


	7. Stop - Sorry

 

* * *

 

 

I don’t want to tell this story anymore.

Something went wrong. I was supposed to be an impartial narrator, like black or white always is, trustworthy and with clean words which weren’t so stained with yellow and orange like a sunrise, so beautiful and soothing and… I can’t even fool myself anymore. Nothing about me is like a sunrise, except for the fact that I am still soothing, but not so beautiful.

Somewhere between his house burning down and his own ending, I’d become too attached. I holidayed in his eyes, sipping from the blueness like it was a cocktail, and lingered in the gray of his home.

It’s not fair. To the others. I might not be as busy as I was during the chocolate days, but I am still needed everywhere, always. I make others wait because I linger at every ending, hoping to see him even though I visit a desert, a rainforest, a mountain, a city drowned in that haunting brown color. Places he’ll never be. I should be happy. Grateful, but, as you know; I am selfish.

Every time I see the blueness, the crossbow, the green smirk on his pink lips, it feels like a breath of fresh air. Like he’s my forest. Oxygen which I don’t need in my lungs, making my chest bigger for him to nestle in, somewhere deep, between my ribs, right there where muscle meets bone, warm and safe.

I try to reason with myself.

I’ve carried so many human souls, seen so many blue eyes, my heart is like one of those steps of an old castle where dragging feet, a thousand, a million of them, slowly corroded the stone, making the stones treacherously slippery as they wind up, up, up to the top from which it’s easier still to slip and fall and invite me. Or it’s like a small child who still hasn’t learned that not all strangers are their friends by default and their mothers yank them back to their sides, tutting at their youngness, trying to explain that not all people are colorless, or at least that softest of yellow which spills out from under their bedroom doors at night to keep the monsters at bay, no, no, some are so white it’s blinding and that’s exactly the point.

 

**Is that how you explain that you are worn-out? And that your heart is fooled easily?**

Anyway, I’ve carried so many souls, I should be numb to them.

And, really, if I’m honest, I don’t like humans much. I have the feeling that it’s mutual, though.

For as much as they cling to their pathetically short lives, they flirt with me far too often. Sometimes I come to claim them, to bring them peace, to carry them, and they’re called back by others instead. Ripped from my arms, colors fading, breaking up around me, the sky wiped clean, though never entirely, you can’t touch death without side-effects, you always lose pieces of yourself when you split up between you and what you were. It can’t be helped.

They are horribly thankless, too. For their lives, how many minutes they’ve had, always wanting more, so greedy like how purple has a thousand different shades and they all clash with each other but still somehow belong together, and they already lengthened their lives, it used to be so much shorter, where are they stealing the minutes from? But still they dream of never dying. Of their skies remaining devoid of any color, unappreciative of the palette they have to offer, so greedy with their paintjobs.

And it’s when I start to think; but that’s not him, because he’s not human at all, he’s an archer, a myth to my own legend, a fable which bears the moral that blueness will forever haunt you if you drown in it and you should let it because it’s so beautiful that even I almost succumbed to it.

 

**An important word:**

**Almost**

I will _not_ be tricked.

The archer is not real, not so human, that’s why I cannot bear to give him back his own name, to taint it with my tongue and making him too ruby, for if he’s there then surely I’m not far behind in this dark-chocolate-world and I can’t, not if I’m there for him, for I want him but don’t want to carry him, never him, even though the sky would be so beautiful, so blue, blue, blue and dark.

So I stop looking. I stop this madness, I…

I _stop_.

Can that be the end of it? Can we pretend that I never lost myself in tears and heartache, can we skip the next few, the next couple, can we just skip towards the end, because I told you: I keep my secrets and then it’ll end here, because the sky has not been blue yet, not his blue, I don’t think. I’ve seen him, of course, but can we just say that I carried souls and they were that golden brown of old liquor, shifting in a glass bottle shared among friends and family, all those people who loved the other people more than they loved the booze, with their voices roughened by smoke but softened by smiles? Or, fine, if you want to hear that story still, I’ll tell that in a minute. It’s short. Quick like a blade. Messy at the end. There, I almost gave it away already.

But can we skip the one after that? You don’t need to know, really, it wasn’t that important either way. It might have been white, that purest of the substance, like foam on rough water, or bubbles in a soothing bath after a hard day, the one in which you could never drown, for they are clouds in the bluest sky and the white is the smoke which fills the church after the prayers, smelling of the woods and home and blessings, but it was also white, white, the brightest of white, the kind you can only hear when children squeal with laughter or your lover kisses your forehead just because they may and can and want to. See? Unimportant. Trust me, you wouldn’t care about that one.

And you’ve been bored too! So bored with this story, so many endings, you even know how it _all_ ends, with him, dying, bleeding, coughing, sweating, so so _so_ scared and alone and with his friends and curled up around his lover and saying goodbye to his children and screaming and losing his mind and blind and helpless and too young and far too old to fight. He will end. And whatever the way, the time, the color, trust me; it will hurt.

It’s not yet my story to tell. I’ll come back to you, if I learn it, maybe. I’ll whisper it to you and you’ll tell me to stop and I won’t because you’ll always want to know how this ends.

You will hate me for it. But that wouldn’t matter because I would have done it with the bluest of intentions.

So, okay. All of that won’t matter. You don’t want to hear, stop, you _don’t_.

Stop. Don’t make me. Don’t ever think that just because you call me, you hold any power over me. I come when called because I want to, because you’re helpless and a color and I love those, but I don’t care about you. I don’t care about what you want, _stop it_.

Did I not threaten you before? Did I say I’m all bluster? I’ve told you: I lie. Stop making me angry. You know me. I may not be the reason, but I’ll be there and if I won’t carry you then… Please, please, no, no, no, no.

I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

I promise, I promise I’ll always carry you, you won’t be alone, you’ll rest against my shoulder, I’ll keep you safe, please, you must believe me. Don’t be afraid.

 

**This is what happened.**

**A preview, if you will.**

**Now, I am sorry. I almost wasn’t, in the next chapter.**

**A desperate reminder:**

**An important word:**

**_Almost_.**

There was a prison.

There were a lot of people. Some of them died.

My archer fought like the color of dirty boots, coated with mud and now faded while they were once the color of tanned hides. Or like the gradation from orange to yellow and some reds in between, like an explosion, out of order.

 Really, I wouldn’t know anything about that. I’m an impartial narrator.

               (STOP I said I was sorry, now STOP)

Many men died. Some women. Only one deserved it, according to Rick.

               (NO I didn’t know any of their names, Carl wasn’t standing beside my archer and they both weren’t using a gun instead of silence to kill, and Rick wasn’t talking and the man my archer calls Hershel in that panicked tone of voice which meant that he was about to die wasn’t about to die.)

But the old man did.  

The other man did too.

They died by the same blade. Their blood mixing, but not their souls. I carried them on different shoulders.

               (BE STILL, there was no reason for that, I didn’t care about that rich alcohol color which could have been honey in different light but wasn’t.)

For a moment I stood over that body while I-don’t-know-his-name-RICK coughed and bled nearby.

               (PLEASE. _Didn’t you hear what he’d said_ , I wanted to ask the body because the soul was resting in my arms and had nothing to do with it anymore _. He’s coming to take that other eye, son. Best close it. He doesn’t think you’ll ever be dead enough for vengeance_.)

And I carried the souls.

I stooped to take one out of a body near a tank. There was an arrow in the heart. The archer was just standing there, looking down at the crumpled body. He could have shot him in the head. Didn’t.

               (PLEASE. Don’t ask me what that means)

A girl came running. Light feet, pounding heart, reaching out for my archer, but trying to stay while he tugs her away, turns them around, away, away, away from me.

 

**Her name is Beth.**

**Her name _was_ Beth.**

 

Their fingers wrapped around each other’s, too afraid to let go, haunted by what they thought was me. They ran, so fast, so far, away, just away, his footsteps so dark, hers blinding white and I just knew, I _knew_ ….

Of course I loved him. How could I not? He was a little boy with the brightest of eyes, and now he is a man with eyes like the ocean before a storm. He’s never the same. I love him like how you love a tiny creature in the palm of your hand, so fragile and small and yet their little feet cause your skin to burn with pain at the thought of never feeling them again. How you love a child even though you make him cry while teaching them to calm themselves during the long nights when he or she isn’t hungry or in pain, but just _alone_. How I love the color blue and shades of red, so primary and strong, but ugly when they combine in flashing lights of a car which stops in front of your house and illuminates serious faces of strangers who tell you that your family is never coming home again.

That is how my heart beats for him. And her, too.

Because when she reaches out, he holds on, tight, so tight that their fingers might snap from the pressure and it isn’t perfect in the way no real love that lasts for centuries ever is. She tries to go left where he wants to turn right. She falls behind his mighty stride. He pulls too hard.

But they cut through the middle instead and he slows down just a bit and she squeezes his hand to let him know that she’s there, he doesn’t have to yank her close when she’s already right there.

I watched how they ran. Away, together, forth.

 

**My archer and Beth.**

**That’s how it should have ended.**

**But I’m not fair.**

**I cheat people**.

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

 

 

There was a gunshot and I was there. Immediate, probably too eager, and I won’t pretend that my motivations were noble either. That I didn’t want to let those poor souls be alone for seconds, that I wanted to embrace them as soon as they escaped that chokehold of their bodies, no, no, it wasn’t anything like that. By now, I suspect you already know my motivations, dark and stinging like the taste of licorice, staining everything it touches, covering red tongues and bleeding down throats until it burns in my stomach.

The archer was there. In that hallway.

When I arrived, I could barely make him out. The color had burst into existence, like fruit gushing into your mouth, sharp teeth tearing apart flesh to reveal the most blinding taste, almost making you choke on summer and blood. The hallway was the purest of white. Not even like snow, or perfect teeth or cocaine, no, no, whiter, much much whiter than all those things.

Maybe you’re protesting now. Speaking truths only humans believe; that white isn’t a color. I’m telling you: it is.

 

**Do you really want to argue with _me_?**

I’m an expert on colors, and I’m telling you; the hallway was dripping white. The blinding kind.

The soul was in my arms before that small body had even reached the floor. Gently, gently, so soft and warm against my chest, confused but at peace, finally resting, listening to the lullaby of my breathing. I remember her name now. Beth.

Heavy footfalls. Running, just two, three steps, boots cracking the white. A hand coming up, a trigger squeezed from so near, I almost expected the bullet to split my own skull.

But as I looked up, he was there.

The gun steady in his hand, ragged breathing in the beat of silence between bullet and death.

I stood. My breath caught in my throat.

 

**The blue eyes were terrifying, a moment, just the eye of the storm, filled with rage and terror, so narrow that they are tiny slits, making the blue precious resources, so scarce, so fleeting, always almost missing it from behind his eyelids, behind that dark hair, behind the guilt and joy and everything else that hides it from me.**

**It was so beautiful, I almost didn’t register that he was falling apart before my very eyes.**

 

A cop died. The bullet slammed her head back, my archer suddenly so loud and quick, so harsh, where are his bolts? Why doesn’t he wield his crossbow, why is everything so impossibly near my ears?

Rick was there. There was blood on his face, on his shirt, red and dripping down. One day, I mused, he would wash it away and I wouldn’t even recognize him. But he stood beside my archer, shoulder to shoulder, almost the same height, same eyes, but as different as brothers often are.

He looked shocked. Frozen. Disbelief bloomed on his face, realizations like vines disappearing into his ears, through his open mouth into his throat, down towards his lungs, his heart, slipping into his brain. He raised his gun, too late, copying my archer’s stance.

_Hold your fire_.

The white soul in my arms, I rocked it gently as I watched how the sky turned that strange color of blue mixing with green but with too much black and white in between.

I am ashamed to say that I missed the moment he started crying. I’ll never forgive myself.

 

**It makes the blue eyes so much more.**

But I told you; I never want him to hurt. The blueness of it all was breathtaking, but those soft broken sobs nearly blackened my heart. I stroked the soul in my arms, told it how lucky it had been to be so loved, but didn’t tell it of the blood, of the tears, no, I wanted it to rest peacefully.

A woman stepped forward, put a hand on my archer. The touch so soft, it made me jealous, for I wanted to lay him to rest, to put that gun down, take it from him, never let him raise it again for I would protect him. But I can’t, of course. I have a job to do.

But I was grateful someone else fulfilled my wishes. That the archer allowed her to push his arm down, that he found comfort in her touch.

The archer was crying now, tears on his filthy cheeks, the look in his eyes so hollow and haunting.

Words were spoken but I didn’t listen. A trade, maybe, a bargain, not quite, but people changed sides nevertheless. Soothing words I didn’t understand, for the sobbing was loud in my ears, like purple clashing with red.

He gathered the body in his arms, gently, gently.

I looked down at the soul in mine, gently, gently, and knew I loved him so.

 

He left. I didn’t dare follow him.

Instead I looked down at the second soul. That strange color, the heartache laid out before me to gently carry away, and for a moment, or the first time in years and decades and eons, I hesitated.

I’ve carried every soul that had ever inhabited a human body. The innocent. The guilty. I carried them. (Gently, gently)

But now….

Did you do this? I wanted to ask the soul. Is this your fault? Are you the reason why the air tastes like September or why my lungs are suddenly filled with poisoned fumes, thick and slow like motor oil, spreading through my very being like a cancer that has jagged glass for fingernails? Is that you? Are you what made him cry?

**A warning that came too late:**

**_Don’t_ make an enemy out of me.**

This is why I drown in colors, why I try not to listen to the leftovers, not even look at them whenever I can help it. They are so fragile. Their lives so short and complicated, only inviting me to the little moments in which they break, like glass, or burst like oozing wounds, sick and bleeding and far too green or like the color of rust, with sharp edges which linger like an infection. Like splinters in my brain, heart, wherever it is I love.

Can you now imagine why I get so tired, because not only were there so many, so few now, oh that hurts too, but there were so many and they might have been light on my shoulders, but their stories are always long and complicated and far too heavy. They blacken and blue my eardrums, they beat my lungs. I’ve seen sadder stories than those of my archer, of course, but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t the most horrible thing I know, because it’s him and it’s horrible and no less terrible than any of all the other victims of life I’ve met during my working days. How does someone else’s pain measure against heartbreak, why should those who died screaming weigh me down more than those who were silenced, I don’t know. I don’t know. I just… I don’t know.

Isn’t that for me to decide? Because even though I love my job, because I’m not the reason, remember, this is not my fault, please remember that; my job is to carry, how many more times must I tell you? I don’t decide.

 

**I’d never have chosen her.**

What is it to you anyway. I don’t have to justify my ways to you. You don’t understand and never will. Stop trying. Just listen, if that’s all you can do, just watch and don’t care, just like how I do. Usually. Try to. Don’t you see? He’s an exception. The outlier. The only thing worth looking at, among all that mass, so dull but always trying and hopeful and going wrong and not enough.

Humans. And their pathetic lives.

And when I look down at that second soul, I almost give up on them all.

I thought it would be better, after the dark chocolate days, but it’s worse because there are so few and now I know their names, Rick, my archer, I know their eyes and I dream about what their colors will be, just for my own entertainment. Sometimes I’m proven right. Other times the yellow is purple instead, but that doesn’t matter.

I know them. Rick is my brother, who calls me often but always with a heavy heart, eyes dulled or clouded over, so distant and so close to me that I can feel his breath on my neck, haunting my footsteps, chasing me always.

And the archer, well…                                                                            

 

**I haunt him.**

I don’t have an delusions, however. I know he hates me.

And when I take his friends, this little white soul, all those others, I can’t blame him.

I might not be the reason, but I am what they know. I’m something they can curse in the middle of the night, something they can blame even though they will never understand that it isn’t _me_.

So I scoop the soul off the ground, out of that police uniform, away from the blame and reasons and into my arms, where it hides in my body heat. I carry it, as careful as I would any other soul. As a baby, rocking it until it calms and realizes that it is over. That I am here.

 

**I have a job to do.**

**I told you: I don’t judge, but I also told you; I lie. But I carry them. Always.**

 

Did you not expect that? Did you think I would want to leave that soul in that rotting body where it would dwell forever, so lost and the wrong shade of blue and green, and getting colder every second without any hope of ever getting warm or solid green again? Does this surprise you, that I carried it?

To be honest, honestly, it surprised me. Because I’m not the reason, no, no, this soul is. This little thing in my arms is the reason why my archer is crying. Why his heart is breaking into tiny pieces and when, if, he ever puts it back together again, it still won’t be how it was. It’ll be morphed, forever changed by this thing in my arms. It might still be beautiful, but there’s a chance he puts it back wrong. Out of order. A new model with sharper edges, jagged cuts and cracks and black holes in which everything disappears.

It makes me sick. It’s so wrong, I almost didn’t pick the soul up. This is all on you, I wanted to tell it. Why do you play God when you know that you will have to face me for it. When you humans fear death, you fear the black abyss, the nothingness, but you never realize that you have to answer to Death. To Me. I am the threshold. Whatever comes after, I come first.

A fear paints my heart, my mind purple, that purple that could be black but isn’t. Because this is the soul that hurt my archer. Just hurt it, nothing more. And I almost didn’t carry it.

Purple in my throat, in my stomach, almost spilling over my lips like blood or sick or acid.

What happens, my treacherous mind whispers in my unwilling ears. What happens to the person who brings me my archer’s soul. Who ends the blueness, oh what will happen to that soul?

I don’t want to think about it. Not yet. Please, no, please let it be time or sickness, nothing I can punish. Let it be a cold winter, let it be grayness that finally takes him down, that stills his heart. It doesn’t even have to be quick. I don’t care about that. It could be slow, like a cancer in his body and the beauty of chocolate days is that he won’t even know it’s there until he dies from it. Let it be silent and invisible, let it be unexpected.

I’m so sorry, I can’t do this, don’t want to do this anymore but I saw those eyes and I never want to miss them. Could he be the rareness in that way? Could he become legend? Myth? Please, could I never have to carry him? That bullets pass him by, that his bones never turn brittle, his heart never that sickly gray-red-black? Could I watch him, forever?

I know that’s not possible. He is human. Male. He has a name, (please, please don’t make me say it). He is mine until he is, truly.

But I’ve done my job for millennia and have never once asked for anything.

Grant me this. Please.

When it ends, when he ends, please, don’t let it be because of another soul. Please. Please, my God, I’m begging you. Don’t let it be someone I can break and not carry and leave behind to rot forever and ever and ever, amen.

 

**Because I will.**

 

 


	9. Metalic

 

 

 

White.

White.

White.

White.

White.

Beth-white.

No. Just, just white.

White.

White like Greene. No.

White like the yellow of her hair, the softness of her soul melting into my shoulder, the way she listened to my footsteps, the smell of how she cared.

No. No. White.

White.

White.

 

**I’m an expert in colors.**

**Stop changing them.**

Soon this story will end. I love endings. There are so many more stories I could tell you, so many endings you might have heard about but have never seen the color of, but these were the ones that mattered. These changed my archer, shifted the blueness in his eyes from light to dark to storms and cellars and chains and blood too.

Humans are very difficult to understand for me because I never see them in full. Rick is strange but familiar, hot-cold in his calling for me, there’s always something blue in his face but sometimes there’s green on his tongue, orange under his fingernails.

Once I visited him while he was with my archer.

He stood very still.

My archer did not. He fell to the floor, over and over, while other men kicked him, beat him, smeared purple into his very pores.

There was a man just behind Rick. He would not be alive shortly.

Carl was there. And Michonne.

I stood a little to the left. My eye was drawn to my hurting archer (I am weak like that). I didn’t miss the way moans fell from his lips, how his skin changed color beneath boots and fists, (I loved that) (No, hated that, sorry, sorry). I did miss how Rick tore someone’s throat out with his teeth. White on creamy white, through red and white and almost-purple, until there was brown, chocolate brown dripping from his chin.

Souls were released from bodies. My archer brought me some by the heels of his boots. Such a wild thing, I mused and almost praised, so golden and pale yellow and a little bit of the bluest sky. Green, too, in the way he recovered from his wounds, like an animal curled up in his den, sinking down next to his brother to guard a silent car, unaware of Death’s watchful gaze.

Did he know I was there?

Probably. I don’t want to boast now, but he’s mine and he’s very clever indeed.

 

**I’m stalling.**

Want to hear more stories? There are loads I haven’t told you. I once met his brother even though I didn’t know it until I carried him on my shoulder and he spilled his secrets into my ears, trickling into my brain as if it were water, sparkling with diamonds. Gems of truths. Meaningless to anyone but me.

Tales, small but bigger than my hands and stomach, oh I have so many.

Him and his brother and Rick, wait, why are there two brothers now, not the same, different colors in the end, but always blue in my mind, Rick and not-Rick, maybe even Before-Rick, but I wouldn’t know about time, such a tricky thing when I am forever and they are so fleeting.

Maybe it doesn’t matter since they were both there, though his brother had been beating him into the ground at the time under Rick’s watchful gaze. I don’t judge. I wanted them both to come rest in my arms, immediately, without another fist landing on precious skin, without another look.

My archer on the ground spluttering and flailing, pawing at his brother with half a mind set on killing him and the other… I don’t know, I don’t know, no, no, don’t tell me he thought about bringing himself to me. That he would give me his blueness, and I would take it and we would both drink it until there was too much blue in both of us and….

Oh no.

There was a car once, too. Later, much later but still too early for the end.

There were two men inside of it. One of them was my archer.

They discussed me.

And my archer – oh. No, I mean, I know I hadn’t technically been called yet, but I told you; sometimes I arrive early, I just thought that there would be an ending, what’s the harm in being prepared? It had nothing to do with the fact that I like to sleep in my archer’s footsteps. I do not stay with him, you realize, I have a job to do. And between jobs I might holiday in blueness – in _colors_ , I mean, but that doesn’t make his eyes any kind of resort-style destination. Stop making such wild claims.

Anyway. I happened to be nearby.

I could taste it in the air that morning. So much promise, an ending unlike any other, a sort of trade if you will. Not his friend, I wouldn’t get to have his friend, but that was all right because I’d never seen him before and even though my archer might find him that strange golden-brown color of falling leaves, I could not care less.

I don’t want golden-brown.

I don’t want white, even.

Calm. Calm. White, white, white, I do care, I might not want, but I do care about the other colors, all the colors there are. I enjoy the whole spectrum. Remember that.

He almost gave himself to me. It didn’t seem to give him any trouble, no blackness on his tongue when he offered the trade, eyes still the oceans before the storm. Did he know I would be there to carry him then? Eagerly waiting, so gentle with him, I’d carry him in both arms so I wouldn’t have to hide him in the crook of my neck, no, my eyes glued to him, always.

It didn’t happen.

Let’s stick to the facts, as they’re almost as cold as some people claim I am. By now, you will know they’re wrong, of course. I am not cold. Never cold.

I want this to end.

I want this to go on forever.

Please. Please.

I’m so pink and orange blending into something horribly indecisive.

 

**Please. Tell me how it all ends.**

**Tell me in colors, whispered between us, licked into my ear.**

**Please tell it to me in hues of metallic so I can pretend it wasn’t real.**

 

 


	10. Holiday - endings

 

* * *

 

 

Think of a color.

Close your eyes and think of a color.

Red, blue, orange, yellow, green, purple, gray, black, pink, white, brown, any color, any shade, any mixture. It can even be silver, if you want. Gold.

It won’t matter, in the end. Just close your eyes and think of all the colors and pick one.

Is that one yours? Will the sky be like that when you pass on?

It’s not so easy to decide. You see, I like blue, it’s one of my favorite colors now, but my sky will be black. The crushing kind. I know it in my bones. I guess everyone knows it in their bones. Black. That last shade you see when being buried alive, when drowning, when closing your eyes in bliss as your lover’s tongue trails up your stomach, when you lose your mind, when you fall asleep. The color in between the stars. It just makes everything brighter. Better. More of themselves.

If I ever get a sky, it will be black.

Have you picked one yet? You should hurry. Human beings are always running out of time.

 

**Humans. Illness. Fate. And now the dead.**

**So many reasons.**

**None of them me.**

You might expect this story to end on a blue sky, but that just means that you weren’t paying attention. I’ve told you: I don’t know how it ends. And if I did, I wouldn’t kiss and tell. I keep my secrets.

So I will just stop, like the heart of someone who didn’t expect to die, like how white ends when something else bleeds into it, how my archer’s breath caught when he walked through the gates of his newest prison.

This place was not so gray but he still didn’t like it much. I could tell by the way it was all so muted. Unsettling in it’s not quite-red’s, blue’s, nothing quite so yellow, or perfectly white. The blackness wasn’t as vast, the mustard not ugly enough and the pink so dull it made his heart break inside his chest. Maybe it had tried to be better, to be something people needed, but it had missed the mark a long time ago. He, with his primary eyes, did not belong.

Everyone could see.

Like the little boy standing on the side of the road, he stood alone, others were nearby but not _with_ him. And he watched how his family burned.

His brother this time, not the one who wasn’t Rick but the one who was. Did that make it worse? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t always understand how his heart beats.

But it was Rick, I’d know him anywhere now that he is once again covered in blood. Purple on his lips, chocolate dripping from his hands and a soul at his feet. He was saying something, something about how the town was not quite orange, dubious in its green’s and I wanted to say: _yes_! _Yes, please, I’m so glad you can finally see, you’ve been so blind to the colors, look at my archer now! Look, look! Aren’t his eyes so blue it drives you red?_

I didn’t though.

My breathing was so loud in my ears, I was surprised my archer didn’t tell me to shut up. I’m kind of glad he couldn’t hear, to be honest. It would betray my position on his shoulder, leaning on that strong frame, much too close but far enough from that blue to not suck on it.

 

**People don’t like it when I hang around.**

But I was close enough to hear that surprised, broken, desperate, angry, hungry, longing look fall from my archer’s eyes.

‘Rick?’

Someone else knew the name of his brother, but sounded surprised to find him covered in blood and cuts. Didn’t know him after all then, just the word. Rick. Easy enough to guess, I think. Who else could wear that name like a mantle, like a cross and hide people behind it, painting them different colors which all say _mine_. Who else would have a crossbow wielding shadow which has a lover in Death without ever even knowing it?

Rick knew, I think, that I loved his brother. Maybe that’s why he kept on inviting me, luring me in, maybe I was like what those shells had been to Michonne, a way to keep the different away. But there’s only one of me. Did he not know that? Or maybe he thought that if I loved him, I would never take him. That if I could visit him, that  that would be enough.

Silly. Stupid. Far too yellow in his thinking still.

It doesn’t matter what his colors or his reasons were, of course. Maybe he just liked having me around to haunt his machete. He makes promises with my comings. He always keeps them.

 

**I like that.**

But; that is it. The last time I saw my archer. Just inside a gate of muted colors, by his brother who burned, a little boy with broken blue eyes, in the dark, next to a man who had guessed Rick’s name right.

An ending of sorts. A reign ending with the thunder of a bullet, a new king crowned in blood and disbelief.

My archer, on the sidelines, in the shadows, a best man who came to the wedding to object with a glare and scowl but who will always hand the rings over. Like a puddle, muddy and hiding its depth until someone sinks in and drowns.

The sky wasn’t blue. I can hardly remember the real color. It might have been gray. It must have been, seeing as I didn’t even notice it.

No, this time, I vowed to enjoy my holidays. You see, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was meant to be a funny little story about a blond kid who watched his house burn down with blue eyes, maybe some other colors thrown in there, just a bit of fun, you know? But I always forget; humans cling to everything. Hope. Life. And me.

When I carry them, I eventually have to put them down.

It’s a soft place, warm. It feels like that first Sunday just before your holiday starts. That moment when you’re far away and call and your mother picks up the phone. It feels like your dad, holding you so tight but still letting go. Or maybe like that best friend, who laughs before you’ve said anything just because they know it will be funny. Or like your siblings, who are so alike and unlike you that they can’t ever not be yours. It feels like a bonfire, like the moment the doctor tells you that the child looks healthy, like that stranger who smiled at you on the street for no reason.

Like all the good things that were unexpected. And all the expected things that were even better than you thought they would be.

But still they cling to me. Because when everything ends, I will be all you know. I won’t blame you. I won’t even pity you. No, no. You might wear me out and down, but I will never blame you. This is not a lie, because the soul who will bring me my archer hasn’t revealed themselves yet. I fear they might make it a lie, though. I try to steal myself for the moment. I imagine him dying, all the time. Maybe it will help. Soften the blow for when it comes. I believe that it will help.

 

**I lie to myself, as often as I lie to you.**

 

So I vowed to enjoy my holidays and this was the perfect moment.

My archer, looking at his brother, eyes wider than usual, just enough, a small crack like the start of a whole building collapsing, the foundations really, shifting and cracking and splitting apart to let me enter. Slip inside his eyes, in the blackness that suits me so, where they will never think to look because nobody likes to meet my archer’s gaze, maybe time reversing, because; do they fear they’ll see me hiding in his pupils? Drawing them closer, so there is more blue to lick at, that lovely ocean and it will be salty like his eyes, like the ocean, but still so lovely because it will be blue still too.

I holiday there.

I slowly suck on the blueness of his eyes.

The color drains with every time I visit, of course, but that doesn’t prevent an addict.

One day, one last lick of color on my tongue, so cold then, and all the blueness will be gone.

That day, it will set the sky on fire with its ocean colors.

Everything will burn blue and I know I will love it so.

I will scoop my archer up, finally, _finally_ , and we shall watch the sky together.

He will rest on my shoulder.

And I will carry him.

Empty eyes. A blue, blue, blue sky dark.

 

**I have remarkable timing.**

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, leaving kudos and commenting!  
> This was actually a lot of fun to write. Got me through a lot of boring lectures, so thanks!


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